Hate Story: Online shaming is a myth... or is it?

By Jeff Cottrill

A violent mob disrupts the East Toronto funeral service for unemployed loner Paul Shoreditch. The riot attracts sensational media attention, especially online, but is soon forgotten. Meanwhile, aspiring journalist, film fanatic and Internet addict Jackie Roberts discovers a bizarre online community that has been sullying

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dragonfly Publishing
• Release date: Feb 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9780645350555

Jeff Cottrill

Jeff Cottrill is a fiction writer, poet, journalist and spoken-word artist based in Toronto, Canada. He has headlined in countless literary series throughout Canada, the U.K., the U.S., France and Ireland over the last twenty years. His performance style is influenced by slam conventions, but subverts them with wit, ironic humour and a satirical tone.Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Jeff has continued his spoken-word career via Zoom, which has allowed him to attend literary events in Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, Lebanon and other new places. In 2021, he had poetry and flash fiction published in several international anthologies, including Paper Teller Diorama (New York), Sinew: Ten Years of Poetry in the Brew (Nashville), Globalisation: The Sphere Keeps Spinning (Sydney, Australia), and Things Fall Apart: Mischievous Machines (Leeds, U.K.).Other short fiction and poems by him have appeared in The South Shore Review and The Dreaming Machine. Jeff was also featured in the poetry podcasts Wordsmith (Australia) and Poets and Muses (U.S.) last year. His poem "This Is Not Real Poetry" (published in this year's Brownstone Poets anthology) is currently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.Jeff's journalistic credits include OHS Canada, Toronto.com, NOW, EYE WEEKLY, Exclaim!, Post City Magazines, YellowPages.ca, Divorce Magazine, JobPostings and Digital Journal.In 2015, he was nominated for a Kenneth R. Wilson Memorial Award for his OHS Canada article "Off the Rails." He holds a Master of Arts degree in English from the University of Toronto, as well as a certificate in creative writing from Humber College. Jeff is the former Literary Editor of Burning Effigy Press.Hate Story is Jeff's seventh or eighth attempt at a first novel.Jeff likes writing, movies, travel and puppies.

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Hate Story

Jeff Cottrill

Copyright

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First published by Dragonfly Publishing, March 2022

All rights reserved by the author.

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission from the publisher.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author/s’ imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Content warning: This book is largely a work of satire and contains naughty words, violence, suicide, bullying, child abuse, homophobic and other slurs, allusions to sexual assault, assassination trivialization, characters who aren’t always likeable, and general political incorrectness. Many of the characters, events and incidents are drawn in broad strokes, sometimes exaggerated, even cartoonish.

ISBN (e): 978-0-6453505-5-5

Cover art by Brett Bakker

Author photograph by Brian Tao, Luxography.ca

For Mrs. Thomas, Mrs. Cain and Ms. Svatos

Three teachers with the sense to encourage creativity

"The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones."

– @nagging_conscience_42, quoting Shakespeare or something

On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.

– Peter Steiner, from an old New Yorker cartoon

ZERO

I

t was the wildest funeral anybody had ever heard of.

That was what the news websites said. So did the gossip sites and blogs. Many jazzed up the story with the best clickbait headlines of which they could conceive. YOU WON’T BELIEVE THE MESS OF CRAZY THIS FUNERAL SERVICE BECAME, shrieked one. CHAOS ERUPTS AT FUNERAL HOME, ONE INJURED, a more respectable outlet offered. The hashtag #PeaceHouseRiot trended on social media sites, especially Spitter, for more than a day. #FuckPaulShoreditch, though not as popular, reached its peak during that period.

The Toronto Post and Chronicle reported the incident on its October 23, 2019, front page, accompanied by a photo of the wreckage. The story begins:

A small funeral home in east Toronto has closed down after a mob of over 100 people stormed a service on Monday afternoon, leaving the service room torn apart and a Greater Toronto Area minister unconscious.

Peace House Funeral Centre Ltd., located in the Danforth and Coxwell area, suffered damages of an undisclosed sum from the incident during the memorial service for the late Paul Shoreditch, who was 46 when he passed away last Tuesday.

I’ve never seen anything like this, Peace House owner and manager Debra Borkowski told the Post and Chronicle. What a mess. I don’t know how the business is gonna survive now.

Rev. Gary Casteras, 76, based at the St. Drogo Presbyterian Church in Mississauga, is recovering in hospital with several injuries, including head trauma.

He deserved it, said one witness, who declined to give her name. Anybody who’d host a funeral for that motherf----r deserves that and worse. [...]

After specific details about the damage to the building and a few more quotations from Peace House staff, the story goes on:

[...] The service itself began 21 minutes late because Rev. Casteras and Peace House personnel were waiting to see if others would show up, according to Borkowski. In total, the funeral had only four attendees. All four escaped the incident unharmed.

What a weird service, said Morty Bozzer, 56, one of the attendees, who identified himself as an aspiring chef. No one seemed all that sad for [Paul Shoreditch]. More like bored. Real weird.

Another attendee, a childhood friend of Paul’s who declined to give his name, expressed a similar sentiment. The feeling in the room was more like duty than mourning. Like, mandatory attendance.

Harvey Shoreditch, 81, and Lydia Shoreditch, 78, the parents of the deceased and the remaining two attendees, both declined to comment.

Bozzer described the service delay as a 20-minute stretch of tacky recorded New Age music before Rev. Casteras finally mounted the podium in front of Shoreditch’s closed wooden coffin. After a pause, the minister began reading passages from the Sermon on the Mount in a near-monotone then asked the attendees if they had any words to say about Paul. No one responded, according to Bozzer.

The room was dead, he added. As dead as the guy we were supposed to be grieving.

I heard the parents just hired that minister at the last minute, the childhood friend said. Paul had no religious bent, so they just picked somebody who used to know Paul when he was a kid. [...]

The Post and Chronicle story describes how Reverend Casteras stepped off the podium and stood beside it, gesturing with his hand to encourage somebody, anybody, to come up and say some kind words. The four attendees stared at the empty podium, and a weighty silence ensued.

A crash interrupted the silence. It sounded like a window being smashed.

Reverend Casteras and the attendees stared at each other in bewilderment.

Peace House was a small and very inexpensive funeral home. The main floor had a small reception area and a service room, with offices upstairs. The crash seemed to have come from the glass front of the building. Reverend Casteras marched to the back. When he reached the doors, he hesitated. The others watched him.

A gibbering noise came from the crowd outside. It sounded like a noisy schoolyard.

Reverend Casteras opened the doors.

He saw a huge hole in the glass front of the centre, with glass shards sprayed over the carpeted floor. The receptionist cowered in a corner.

What’s going on? Reverend Casteras shouted.

He received a quick answer. He received it right in the middle of the forehead.

As the reverend lay on the floor, barely conscious and surrounded by broken glass, laughter swept in from outside. The screaming and shouting became louder, and it was now clear to everyone that the voices belonged to grownups, not children.

A young, suited Peace House staff member went to check on the reverend, then took out a cell phone and called for an ambulance. Another one, a forty-something woman also in a suit, picked up the object that had struck the reverend. It was a small, round sphere wrapped in a piece of notepaper, held on by a rubber band. The attendees and Peace House staff watched as she pulled the notepaper off.

A softball.

An old, old softball, the whiteness gone from years of dust and dirt and decay. The letters PS were carved into it.

The staff member unfolded the notepaper. In the centre, in big, bold capital letters in black marker, somebody had written:

FUCK. PAUL. SHOREDITCH.

Underneath, in small handwriting, was scribbled in pencil:

haha not that anybody would want to!!!!

The younger staff member looked out of the broken window, wary of falling window shards.

He gasped.

What is it? the suited woman asked.

I have no idea, the other replied, his voice shaky. Wow. It... it looks like those bigot freaks from the Westboro Baptist Church have taken a field trip here.

Protesters on the sidewalk, on the street, some even blocking traffic. Dozens. Most looked to be in their twenties. Some carried sticks or clubs or baseball bats. Some had homemade signs with statements like PAUL SHOREDITCH WAS A LOSER or NO ONE MOURNS A PIECE OF SHIT. paul shorditch wut a whore bitch!! read a messy one, held by a pizza-faced teenage boy in a backwards baseball cap. Some were typing on their cell phones.

It was, in its own way, an ideal portrait of intersectional equality, Dr. Raymond Q. Withers, a University of Toronto humanities professor who lived in the area and witnessed the event, would later tell the Post and Chronicle. A fair mix of races and genders–Caucasians, African Canadians, East Asians, men, women, a few disabled, maybe even a transgender or two–all working together, all united in their loathing of one dead man.

As other staff and attendees gathered near the broken front window watching the melee, the crowd turned its attention to one woman behind them–a tall, mildly overweight woman with a scowling elfin face. Underneath her open fall jacket, one could see a pink T-shirt with a cute cartoon cat on the front. She led the crowd in a group chant.

Who’s the biggest asshole who ever lived? she screeched.

"Paul Shoreditch!" the group yelled back.

Who’s the second-worst?

"Anyone who mourns him!"

This chant was repeated several times until another voice cried, Let’s go in!

Are we ready to go in now? called the screechy woman.

Inside the reception area, the employees trembled.

Oh... crap, mumbled the female staffer.

Should we call the police, too? said the other.

Nobody had a chance to answer as the front doors of Peace House burst open. In flowed a sea of angry voices and rushing footsteps. Guests and staff members dashed out of the way as the crowd stormed into the building, some trampling Reverend Casteras’ near-inert body.

They upturned the seats and threw other furniture on the ground. They smashed vases and stomped on the flowers. They ripped apart a wreath. They tore apart the hastily assembled display of old photographs of the deceased. They defaced the walls, a few with spray paint, a few with magic marker, and one by urinating. When Reverend Casteras got on his knees, struggling to get back on his feet, a rioter saved him the trouble by kicking him between the eyes and knocking him out.

Some filmed the chaos with their smartphones. Videos popped up all over Spitter, joined by the hashtags #PeaceHouseRiot or #FuckPaulShoreditch. A few of them made it onto online news stories later that day, and those stories were later linked on those same Spitter accounts, with gloating and bitter statements by the users.

A handful of giggling college kids stood over the coffin on the front platform, one holding a gasoline can, another a lighter. None of the group, apparently, had thought through the possible consequences of setting a coffin ablaze in a wooden building full of people. They were spared a bleak lesson by a sudden screech: "Leave the fucker! He’s mine."

The group made way for the elfin woman in the cat shirt.

She opened the coffin and looked down at the face of the ex-person who had inspired the chaos. Peace House morticians had done a good job on a corpse that had fallen twenty-three storeys. Some of those nearby took a break in their orgy of property damage and watched in silence.

Finally, the woman spoke.

This is for Fiona, you sack of shit.

And she spat into the corpse’s face.

She looked up at the surrounding college kids and said, Your turn.

The Post and Chronicle story continues:

[...] Witnesses report that several rioters pulled Shoreditch’s body out of the coffin and beat and kicked it for several minutes while other rioters stood by and laughed.

That thing was totally unrecognizable by the time they were done with it, one told the Post and Chronicle.

They totally beat him to a second death.

Details were scant on the reasons for the mob’s extreme animosity towards Shoreditch, whose recent falling death in Etobicoke was ruled an accident. Asked why she was taking part in the riot, one young woman simply said, Because of all the awful things Paul’s done. When pressed further, the rioter did not provide any specific examples.

Another anonymous witness, when asked why he hated Shoreditch so much, responded, Because he’s a scumbag! That’s what everybody says.

A third rioter was less sure of her reasons for participating. I don’t know what Paul Shoreditch did, she admitted, but it must have been terrible to get this kind of response from so many people. I believe them.

Kathy McDougal, editor of the popular Toronto-based news and celebrity-gossip website Kat’s Korner, was a key player in the incident. Borkowski said that she recognized McDougal as the latter helped lead the first wave of the mob inside the Peace House building.

Asked afterwards why she had taken such a dominant role, McDougal said, To pay Paul Shoreditch back for all of the ways he has destroyed me. And many others.

When asked for clarification, McDougal responded, Seriously? Read the website! Avenger’s website has everything you need to know, and declined to comment further.

The mangled remains were cremated and given a quick city burial at St. John’s Norway Cemetery & Crematorium, with a flat, inconspicuous headstone that read SHOREDITCH. Within days, vandalism began marking the spot. First, someone spray-painted FUCK PAUL SHOREDITCH on the stone. After that was cleaned up, someone smashed the stone with a sledgehammer, making the lettering illegible. Later, dog excrement was found on the marker. No perpetrators were caught. The grave was eventually moved to an undisclosed location.

A week later, Peace House Funeral Centre filed a lawsuit against Katherine Elizabeth McDougal for an undisclosed sum of damages. The following day, the Spitter account known as @avenger_of_the_weak_81 stated that the user had undeniable evidence the funeral home regularly discriminated against Indian clients. Before Peace House had a chance to respond, the post was forwarded several thousand times, sometimes with additional accusations of racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, anti-disability, and more. No evidence of these accusations ever came to light–no specific incidents were even detailed–but Peace House soon dropped the lawsuit.

And then all the fuss ended, and the world moved on.

There were two facts that the media, including the Post and Chronicle, left out of their stories, simply because the reporters were not aware of them. Few were.

One was that the softball that had injured Reverend Casteras had belonged to the deceased.

The second was that Paul Shoreditch’s death–that twenty-three-storey fall officially filed as an accident–had been a suicide.

None of the mob who tore apart Peace House Funeral Centre would have cared if they had known the latter. But they could have easily figured it out. Paul Shoreditch had a Spitter account, one with zero followers, but many past replies and forwards. And if anybody had bothered to check his profile page, they would have seen one last entry, with a date and time not long before his bloody, squashed remains were peeled from the asphalt.

Don’t pretend you feel bad about this, the final Spitter post read. This is what you all wanted, and you know it.

Paul Shoreditch need not have worried. Nobody was pretending anything.

Almost nobody.

ONE

Y

our stupid, the anonymous comment reads below the blog essay. you dont know shit abt movies. why tf should i listen 2 some retard fucken white chick tell me abt racism and movies. you dumb priveliged white hore stick to what you now

Jackie snorts and smiles. She loves getting these. Sometimes she wonders if that is her favourite reason for keeping this blog.

She posted the essay online yesterday–a lengthy homage to Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. The movie turned thirty years old several months ago, and Jackie likes to use anniversaries divisible by five as an excuse to write critical essays on her favourite films from years past. Previous entries have included a fiftieth birthday homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey and a seventy-fifth anniversary rant about the studio butchering of The Magnificent Ambersons. The Scarborough Indie Voice, the online mag for which she reviews, has no interest in the classics, so she writes these lengthy blog posts on her own time for fun. She models these articles on Roger Ebert’s Great Movies essay series, although she does not fancy herself anywhere near as talented a critic.

Jackie clicks in the Reply box under the anonymous comment, then stares at the cursor for a few seconds.

Then she types, My stupid what? She chuckles but deletes it. Too subtle for this moron. She thinks for a moment, then types again.

I know more than you think, O Nameless One. I’ve been watching movies and reading film criticism since before you were the smallest, wimpiest sperm in your daddy’s tiny dick. And surely, I don’t have to be a visible minority to understand that racism is still a big problem in society?

She reads it over, thinks, and adds: I may be white and privileged, but I’ll value that over being a worthless troll like you any day. The comment is posted with a quick click.

Another lazy Saturday morning of sitting around, surfing the web and trolling the trolls. Jackie might go to a movie by herself at one of the city’s second-run theatres tonight; she has not decided yet. She might stay in and watch a DVD or stream a movie online instead. Either way, she likes to spend Saturdays on her own, relaxing in her small East York bachelor pad. The flat is cluttered and cramped but a perfect refuge for her. Classic-movie posters watch over her from the walls and doors. The bookshelves above her bed include titles by Ebert, Elmore Leonard, Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, Patricia Highsmith, Timothy Findley and Bill Watterson. The far wall is lined with years of DVD purchases, in a bookcase and on more shelves. Everything from Criterion editions of foreign classics and sets of 1970s TV shows to a few Marvel Cinematic Universe hits decorate the wall.

The fridge and cupboards are near bare, but if she decides to stay in all weekend, there is enough sustenance and entertainment around to keep her going.

She opens another browser tab and logs into Spitter. Spit Your Thoughts at the World! the slogan reads at the top of the home page. Jackie wonders who will pick a fight with her this morning or if she will be in the mood to pick one herself.

She does not wait long. One of the first posts she spots is a forward from an account in Alabama. Charming social commentary from a distinguished gentleman, the forwarder has written above the post, which reads: Libtards and there movies. Just saw the shape of Water wat a piece a crap. Only Holly-weird fagit think its ok to show woman having relations with a fish creature. Pervs.

Jackie licks her lips. She clicks Reply and types directly to the original poster, who goes by the username @TrumpLover1776 and displays a low-res photo of an American flag as the profile pic.

The Shape of Water is a beautiful movie full of love, she types. You are an ugly person full of hate. She posts the reply, then types a second: And besides, what’s wrong with relations between a woman and a fish? You clearly had no problem about your mom and her brother.

Jackie laughs out loud. For a second or two, she wonders if the response is too cheap, if it is beneath her. She decides she does not care and posts it anyway. Out of curiosity, she flips back to JackieRoberts.com to see if there is any follow-up to her reply to Anonymous.

fuck you cunt, Anonymous has written.

Now there’s a well-thought-out response, she thinks. She is about to continue that conversation when she hears a tinny rendition of the Midnight Cowboy theme playing from her ten-year-old wooden IKEA coffee table.

She picks up her cell phone. Rick Pevere and his number are flashing on it. On a Saturday? she thinks. Jackie considers letting it go to voicemail or texting him back. Before she can stop herself, she answers the ring and taps the speakerphone on.

You busy today? Rick says.

For fuck’s sake. Should I lie?

Nnnnnnot really, she answers.

You sure? You sound hesitant.

Too late. Yes. I mean–yes, I’m not busy.

Good. I’m in the office today. Wanna come down for a few minutes? Something I wanna talk to you about.

Huh? Sure. Now?

If you’re free.

What’s it about?

Tell you when you get here.

Crap. Rick has never asked her to come see him on a weekend before. Something she has done or said? Is she about to be fired from the Indie Voice, or whatever the equivalent is for such a small publication? Is the site going to shut down, or drop the film section? Or is she worrying about nothing? Probably nothing.

Jackie closes the web browser on her computer and grabs an elastic band to put her dark brown hair into her usual ponytail. Humphrey Bogart, hatted and suited as Sam Spade, looks at her from the screen wallpaper pic. He does not look optimistic.

She is about to shut down the computer but feels compelled to check Spitter again.

One new notification. Somebody under the user ID @nagging_conscience_42 has replied to her last post to @TrumpLover1776. That’s not fair, Jackie, the former has written. Not everybody shares your life experience or cultural education. Not everybody can relate to Shape the way you do. Think about that before you condescend to others, OK?

The profile pic for @nagging_conscience_42 is a fuzzy photo of a pert beagle puppy.

Jackie reads the comment again and shrugs. I got nothing, she says out loud.

The office, as Rick Pevere put it, is the basement of his parents’ beachfront house in a quiet, dull Scarborough neighbourhood. This is where he runs and edits ScarboroughIndieVoice.ca. Books, CDs, newspapers, and printed-out e-mail press releases lie haphazardly all over some tables and chairs. Thick piles of dust cover the corners and tiny cloth bits and dirt specks dot the dull grey carpet. The little room where the magic happens, as Rick self-deprecatingly describes it, has a distinct smell of Popeye’s chicken because Rick munches on a breaded wing as he talks.

Sure you don’t want a piece? he says, indicating the cardboard box of chicken. There’s a couple of breasts in there.

No thanks. Trying to cut down on the junk food.

Rick keeps talking with his mouth full. I should take a page from your book, he says. This stuff is gonna give me a heart attack before I’m forty. Maybe a stroke too. He swallows. Maybe it’ll be worth it. So yummy.

Jackie nods. Junk is yummy. That’s why we’re addicted to it.

Rick drops some bones in the garbage bin under his desk. A short, awkward silence.

Right, he says. So what’d you want to see me about, again?

Jackie squints.

"You called me," she says.

Rick blinks, then slaps his forehead.

I’m an idiot, he says. He takes three sheets of paper from the other side of his desk and hands them to her. Just wondering if you saw this the other day?

A printout of the Post and Chronicle online news story about the Peace House fiasco.

Yeah, says Jackie. "Think I saw it in the Star."

What d’you think?

She does not know what she thinks.

Uh, yeah, she says with a shrug. Pretty messed up.

Pretty messed up indeed. He sips from a can of Diet Pepsi.

Sort of like the wildest Coen Brothers movie. And not one of their good ones.

"I thought it was funny how the media–even the mainstream stuff–said so little about Paul Shoreditch himself. Some